The Contest of Calumny

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Although it is close to two years away, the race for president is on, and while it will be the costliest in history, it is already shaping up to be the nastiest.

Although now unopposed, Obama might have a challenge from the Left, and there is something of a tradition of electoral suicide going back to 1968, when liberals abandoned Humphrey and helped elect Nixon, then shunned Carter in favor of Kennedy in the primary then Anderson in the general helping Reagan. Then in Florida 2000 Nader helped elect G. W Bush etc.  

But at this point it is clear that most of the competition will be among Republicans and their jostling for attention already looks like a race to the bottom.  From the founding fathers on there has been plenty of political mudslinging, including the more recent history of Father Coughlin and Colonel McCormack’s peddling reactionary poison.  But never before has hate been manufactured and marketed so shamelessly.

And it is the good “Christians” who are doing it!  We all know Sarah Palin speaks to God in tongues and to man in trash.  But good ol’ Mike Huckerbee seemed to have some intelligence and decency, until last week when he said of Obama…

”If you think about it, his perspective growing up in Kenya with a Kenyan father and grandfather, their view of the Mau Mau Revolution in Kenya is very different than ours because he probably grew up hearing that the British were a bunch of imperialists who persecuted his grandfather.”    

And it won’t be long before Mitt weighs in with more ridiculous racist lies dressed up as campaign rhetoric, not that his latest barefaced lies about national security issues aren’t whoppers.  But like a CEO reassuring the shareholders, Mitt does have that button-down corporate sincerity.  His lies flow off the tongue like commercials for oil companies claiming how much they care about the environment.

So with Gingrich already a serial liar, now dressed up in Catholic piety, the field of nightmares is just warming up.  I can see Murdoch shouting the order “start the presses” as Fox and the dominant illiberal Press start to pump it up and pile it on, all the way to November 2012. 

I remember PBS before the commercials when William F. Buckley debated George McGovern from Yale.  There used to be a political discourse that challenged ideology and tested ideas.  Now we are trapped in the electoral checkout line surrounded by tabloid headlines, each more outrageous than the last.  And Huckerbee’s recent example of “the headless girl in a topless bar” is mild compared to what’s coming, as the Republican candidates court the rabid Right.

But let’s take a timeout for a reality check.  Obama almost never saw his father, only very briefly.  He grew up with the only father figure who was a white Republican from Kansas while his Kenyan father drank himself to death living in fear of the post-colonial ruling party who hounded him until his death.  If anything Obama is likely to be influenced by an anti Mau Mau perspective, not to mention the white folks from the heartland who actually nurtured him.

But the truth obviously does not matter; as Frank Luntz recently learned when half of the prospective Republican voters he polled said Obama was a Muslim with a fake birth certificate.  Maybe Congressman Peter King will bring this up on Thursday when his Homeland Security Committee looks into Muslims lurking amongst us. 

Man up Congressman King and impeach the President!  Do something about that foreign-born terrorist in the White House.  If you believe what you say, then isn’t this much more serious than a stain on a dress?